The lower mold-galleries of Blast Furnace Number Four stretched into the darkness like the crypts of a sunken cathedral.
The hall was fourteen feet wide, spanned by low segmental arches of hard firebrick supported by square pillars of rough-dressed granite. The floor beneath Tomas Reed’s boots was not bare stone. It was cushioned by an ankle-deep bed of black foundry sand. A fine, crushed mixture of quartz dust, ground hard coal, and dried animal fat that deadened the sound of their footsteps into a muffled, shifting crunch.
Every few yards, abandoned iron equipment lay half-buried in the black sand like the bones of ancient beasts. Broken cast-iron flask frames, warped bronze core-boxes, rusted ladle shanks with four-foot handles. Then he split wooden patterns carved into the shapes of spur-gears and steam cylinders lay scattered where the night shift had dropped them eighteen years ago.
“Watch your footing, Tomas,” Nessa warned, her voice hushed. She held her brass sound horn low. She listened to the surrounding reverberations echoing through the hall. “There are open drain traps in the floor every twenty paces. If you step into a melted rock waste sump in this sand, you’ll break a leg.”
Tomas stopped, letting the yellow circle of his storm-lantern sweep the ground before them.
